Three photos from yesterday morning

I was out with Callie and the camera yesterday morning. Here are three things I saw.

The first thing I noticed, as I headed out the back door, was the cuckoo. It was cuckooing loudly, and it was perched in one of its favorite spots in the area — at the top of the tallest tree around, which happens to be in our yard. People say you hear the cuckoo all the time in spring, but that you seldom if ever see one. I see this one fairly often, but from afar.

The second thing I noticed was weird clouds in the northern sky. They looked like they could have been condensation trails left by jets flying over, but I don't really think that's what they were. They blew away fairly quickly, because it was a windy morning.

And finally, I saw a new view of the vineyard. Usually I see the vines spread out ahead of me like a carpet or blanket. But this time I noticed a hole in the woods that grow along a water course in a low area. Through the hole, I could see a patch of vines that are turning greener and greener with each passing day.

Rôti de porc au miel et aux épices

Yesterday I cooked a pork roast. It was a boned shoulder roast that had been rolled and tied. I wanted to cook the roast on the rotisserie in our oven. We might not have this oven very much longer and we haven't been able to find a new kitchen stove that has all the features we would like to have, including a rotisserie, so we may have to give it up in some kind of trade-off.

You have to get the roast or fowl position correctly on the skewer to make sure the drippings fall into the pan of water during the cooking.

Anyway, my idea was to baste the pork with a honey-based, spicy sauce before it went into the oven and a couple of times during the cooking process. The ingredients in the basting sauce — sorry, no real recipe, because I was winging it — were 100 grams of thyme-flower honey; a little olive oil; splashes of white wine, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and soy sauce; a pinch of ground cloves and a tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes; good quantities of minced ginger and minced garlic; and finally, salt and black pepper. I cooked the sauce for a couple of minutes to blend all the flavors and melt the honey, and then I let it cool before spooning some over the roast.

Thanks to friends for bringing us a few little jars of different kinds of honey from Paris.

Getting the meat you want to roast onto the rotisserie is always a trial-and-error process. It's not hard to clamp it on, but it's not easy to judge exactly where you need to position the roast on the skewer. That means putting it on and then putting the whole thing in the oven a couple of times, before you turn the oven on, to see if it's centered properly. It took me three or four tries. That done, I was ready to baste the roast with the marinade and get it on to cook.

The marinade was just slightly syrupy — not too thick and sticky.

I always put a pan of water directly under the roast or chicken that I'm cooking on the rotisserie. The drippings from the meat, including the basting sauce, then fall into the water and don't burn in the bottom of a dry oven pan — you don't want to create a lot of smoke and the process is much cleaner that way. You can always boil down some of the cooking liquid at the end, while the roast rests, to make a dipping sauce if you want one. This pork roast, which weighed about 2½ lbs., or just over a kilogram, and it cooked for two hours at 350ºF (180ºC). I let it rest in a warm oven for 45 minutes before taking it off the skewer and carving it.

Paris streets at nightfall

My mind is in Paris this morning. My old friend CHM is supposed to arrive there this morning for a three-month stay, and other friends will be there on vacation toward the end of May. I myself plan to go spend two or three days dans la capitale toward the end of the month.

These are some photos I took early on a February evening several years ago. I don't think I've ever posted them before. As you can see, the natural light was fading but interior lighting gave the shops a nice glow.

The neighborhood is more or less the one where CHM has his apartment. He grew up there. I've gotten to know it better over the past 20 years. Maybe you recognize the street. It's a famous shopping area.

I'm seriously considering renting a car for my upcoming trip to Paris, rather than taking the train. CHM plans to come back to Saint-Aignan with me when I return, and having a car would make the traveling a lot easier for both of us. It will be a holiday weekend, and if we plan it right we'll get into and out of Paris without hitting all the holiday traffic jams.

Parking in the city — in this neighborhood, anyway — should be easy on a weekend when many Parisians have four days off work or school and will have left town for the coast or the countryside. It's never inexpensive to park a car in Paris, but the main thing is to be able to find a parking space near where you are staying.

J'ai faim ! Pas vous ?

It's a rainy premier mai — France's first May holiday. And here I am, sitting here dreading going out for a wet walk with the dog, and realizing I'm hungry. Maybe these old photos of mine with make you hungry too, and make you dream of a nice lunch in France. (Remember, you can click or tap on the images to enlarge them and make yourself even hungrier.)

Un choix d'entrées...

...un plat principal...

...et, bien sûr, un dessert.

Today's going to be a day to stay in, do some organizing and cleaning in the house and on the computer, and make a nice lunch. We'll be having a pasta dish with smoked salmon and vegetables.